Thursday, January 17, 2013

I've got a 60-hour a week job.
I'm chair of the Tarrant County Libertarian Party.
I've got a daughter at Texas A&M who costs more than The Hundred Years' War.
I'm setting up Libertarian Meetups, Speaker Series, Book Discussion Groups, and Barroom Gripe'n' Moan sessions.
I've got a pile of books on my bedside table, another in my truck, and three shelves at work - all of books that I've been meaning to get to.
I'm working on an e-book.
I've started interviewing people at work about a libertarian-ish business book about the value they bring to our company.
I've got scraps of about ten songs that I need to finish writing.
I've got a very busy bar schedule.
I think I've been inside a church four times in three years.
I don't really know how many dachshunds are in my back yard, and I may have forgotten some of their names.
Any given week, more people on Facebook invite me to more events than Paris Hilton actually attends in a month.

What's missing?

A Twitter feed !!!!

If you are so inclined, you can follow me on Twitter. Allen Patterson @Whited79

(Whited, for the name of this blog. '79 for the year I was released from high school.)

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

"Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace."

Everyone knows that the term fascist is a pejorative, often used to describe any political position a speaker doesn’t like. There isn’t anyone around who is willing to stand up and say: "I’m a fascist; I think fascism is a great social and economic system."

But I submit that if they were honest, the vast majority of politicians, intellectuals, and political activists would have to say just that.
Fascism is the system of government that cartelizes the private sector, centrally plans the economy to subsidize producers, exalts the police State as the source of order, denies fundamental rights and liberties to individuals, and makes the executive State the unlimited master of society.

The CEO of Whole Foods Market said President Obama's healthcare law is more like "fascism" than "socialism," a parallel he drew in 2009, to some backlash.

John Mackey made the remark in an interview Wednesday with NPR.

"Technically speaking, it's more like fascism," Mackey said of the Affordable Care Act. "Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. In fascism, the government doesn't own the means of production, but they do control it, and that's what's happening with our healthcare programs and these reforms."